Syria army, Kurds push IS out of Hasakeh city: monitor

BEIRUT: Syrian troops and Kurdish fighters ousted the Islamic State group from Hasakeh on Tuesday, more than a month after the jihadists attacked the northeastern city, a monitoring group said.

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Throughout its spectacular rise to power during 2013 and its announcement of an Islamic “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014, IS has presented itself as unstoppable.

The ultra-radical Sunni group has used terror and mass executions to seize territory in Syria´s north, including the group´s de facto capital in Raqa, and east, where it has captured most of resource-rich Deir Ezzor province.

But in recent months, IS has experienced a series of defeats at the hands of Kurdish militia in north and northeast Syria. The jihadists´ only major victory was its capture of the ancient town of Palmyra in May.

Now the IS assault on Hasakeh city, which began on June 25, has ended in defeat after 33 days of fighting.

“The Syrian army pushed IS out of Zuhur, the last neighbourhood where it was present in Hasakeh city, on Tuesday” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

At least 287 IS fighters were killed in the Hasakeh assault, either in clashes with regime troops and the Kurdish People´s Protection Units (YPG) or in air strikes by a US-led coalition, the Observatory said.